"Knowledge about government is power" --GovTrack
UnionFacts.org is a Shill for the Corporatocracy. Why is Portland's Fox Affiliate KPTV-12 Anti American Worker?
Dear Oregonians,
Everyone knows that it is Primary Election Season in Oregon. We are all being exposed to various groups promoting their agendas. Some legit, and some simply bullshit.
During the lunch hour today (Friday, May 9, 2008) I saw a television Ad running on KGW (broadcast channel 8) that I found highly misleading/slanted and provocative ... an insult to our intelligence.
The Ad was simply a right-wing-nut attack upon Organized Labor and Unions. It was an attack from the shadows, and by lackeys of the Corporatocracy. My first response was to check the domain registration for the domain name/URL being promoted in the Ad, to see who is behind it. And "behind" is the operative word.
I discovered that the registrant of that domain name prefers SECRECY; no surprise there, based upon the nature of their Ad. The cowards who created it obviously anticipate a highly negative response, and simply stated, they don't have the balls to confront responders.
I called the station (KGW 503.226.5000) and had to leave a voice-mail message. They have not called me back yet, I doubt if they ever will.
Connecting the dots (reads: follow the money and the whores), keep in mind that KGW is an NBC affiliate and NBC is owned by GE; GE is a key player in the 'Military-Industrial Complex' that Eisenhower warned us about. I don't know if KGW's station license and FCC regulations require them to disclose the contact information for their paid advertisers or not ... but I intend to find out, and I'll leave it to others to decide whether KGW is about the money, or about the whores, or both.
More poking around on the 'net revealed a possible link between that Ad's hate-speech and these old, ubber-conservative anti-organized-labor types (reads: GOP Republican-types) and what I found makes me wonder even more about the timing of the Ads.
Richard "DICK" Berman (don't ya find it interesting that some of the biggest haters in America are named "DICK" (i.e. Cheney, Nixon, Berman)? and James Bowers. Click the link to DICK's bio and you'll discover that DICKIE has made it his life's work to bash American Workers and Organized Labor. Here is an excerpt (emphasis added), but ya just gotta visit their web-site, by click the link, to see a picture of exactly what we're dealing with here; heck, if he wasn't filthy rich he could pass for a Clinton supporter, you-know old, white, and angry:
... Berman was previously employed as the Executive Vice President of Public Affairs for the Pillsbury Restaurant Group, where he was responsible for the government relations programs of all restaurant operations. Berman also was a (anti)labor lawyer for the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Dana Corporation, and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation.
Rick Berman has testified on numerous occasions before committees of the various state legislatures, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives and has been named a "Star Rainmaker" on Capitol Hill by The Hill, a popular Washington, DC newspaper. He has appeared on all major television networks and has organized national coalitions on a variety of issues."
What's a "Star Rainmaker" you might ask, well here is the dictionary definition:
"Slang. an executive or lawyer with exceptional ability to attract clients, use political connections, increase profits, etc.: The president has several rainmakers among his advisers."
Some might shorten that formal definition to a single word: 'WEASEL'. Certainly not the type of person who toils for a living or actually manufactures anything (except lies) or contributes anything of substance to the greater good. Pretty much a just butt-muncher.
DICK Berman is a LOBBYIST whose organization can be hired to attack any cause. Here is a report by 'Consumer Deception' about this ass-hole's attack on PETA: http://www.consumerdeception.com/
If you'd like to know more about the clown behind these Union bashing Ads, click the links below and READ even more:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=8984
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-05-04-name-edit_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2006-07-31-lobbyist-usat_x.htm
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=4140447
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/32386/
Here is an excerpt from a Washington Post article about this stain named DICK (emphasis and comments added):
"But even the MOD Squad is a pale imitation of the reality of the Beltway's most outrageous advocate, who goes by the name of Rick Berman. In recent months Berman has been in the news for placing full-page ads in major newspapers (funding sources unidentified) that gently compare America's union leaders to Fidel Castro and like authoritarians. The unionists' sin, Berman argues, is their support for allowing workers to join unions simply by signing affiliation cards rather than subjecting themselves to a National Labor Relations Act election process in which pro-union workers are frequently fired.
But Berman's salvos against unions are just the latest in a line of attacks he's leveled against drunk-driving laws, anti- smoking statutes, food safety ordinances and minimum-wage standards. He is, broadly speaking, the lobbyist for the Hobbesian state of nature.
Working chiefly under the aegis of his Center for Consumer Freedom, Berman has accused Mothers Against Drunk Driving and kindred groups (in the words of one of his Web sites) of "junk science, intimidation tactics, and even threats of violence to push their radical agenda." Another Berman Web site was devoted to dismissing the dangers of mercury levels in fish.
[nice ... bashing 'Mothers Against Drunk Drivers' ... that speaks volumes about this steaming dung-pile's credibility, aye?]
Berman's center was jump-started in 1995 with money from Philip Morris, and, thanks to memos that were made public in the discovery process during the lawsuits against Big Tobacco, his strategic vision is now plain for all to see. "The concept," he wrote Philip Morris at the time, "is to unite the restaurant and hospitality industries in a campaign to defend their consumers and marketing programs against attacks from anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-meat, etc. activists." The industries apparently have appreciated Berman's work. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, a former Berman associate has produced documents showing that Coca-Cola, Wendy's, Tyson Foods, Cargill and Outback Steakhouse are among Berman's largest donors.
The law may have hauled Abramoff off the stage, and DeLay may be huddling with his counsel and his Creator to plan his next move. But Rick Berman rolls merrily along, an inexhaustible source of material for the Reitmans, Buckleys and all who aspire to chronicle our depravities." [SOURCE]
[nice ... DICK is said to be a lower life form than Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay]
PRWeek (Public Relations) magazine's Hamilton Nolan added this about this back in the June 26, 2006 edition; Pg. 25, about this not-so-dynamic-duo's anti-union campaign:
"Perhaps the most visible development in the field this year has been
the establishment of the Center for Union Facts (CUF), an anti-union
group backed by undisclosed corporate interests which has undertaken a
powerful multi-year, multimillion-dollar push to discredit organized
labor. James Bowers, a creative director at CUF's firm Berman &
Company, is responsible for the group's public campaigns, which center
around an extensive Web site supported by advertising campaigns and
national media coverage." [SOURCE]
Richard Berman single handedly makes the case for a woman's right to choose. He's an abortion gone wrong. If you believe that smoking is good for your lungs, and that driving drunk is a safe thing to do, DICKIE is your boy.
Anyway, I could go on and on, presenting all sorts of parallels between these two greedy haters and everything negative for working-class Americans, but it is easier to ask you a few questions which might help to challenge the logic behind their nonsensical Ads:
Conservative, GOP Republican Ronald Reagan single-handedly decimated the Air Traffic Controller and Airline Unions in the 80s.
So, if you are old enough to have flown on the airlines back then, like I am, and you've also flown recently, lemme ask you this question: Was flying a better experience in the 80s and before, or has it been a better experience for you recently?
Anti-Union GOP Republicans and BushCo, along with Corporations like Wal-Mart have been running this show called the American Capitalist system for the past several decades now (including the Republican Congress through the Clinton years) ... what has been the net result for American workers and the directly linked American middle class? Not so hot, huh?
Where have these coalitions shipped our jobs? Overseas.
How many Americans have lost access to employer-based health care coverage? 47-Million plus? Hell there are only something like 300-million of us in total. There is increasingly two groups in America, the HAVES and the HAVE NOTs; THEM versus US. GOP Republicans and their failed economic theories, like those of these two misguided, anti-Union Cretins, have brought us the weakened economy threatening the very existence of the American Middle Class.
How many of you know of stories about corporations hiring part time and temporary workers to displace full-timers with paid benefits?
Again, I could go on, and on, drawing parallels between the stupidity of the premise presented by DICK Berman, James Bowers, and everything negative for the American middle class. But, an analogy probably sums it up best ...
If you were a player in the NFL, would you want to be in the room alone with billionaire franchise owners like the Washington Redskins' Daniel Snyder, or the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones to negotiate the terms of your employment agreement? Or, would you want an agent and the Players' Union there to help you negotiate? We can't all afford our own agent, but we can afford to VOTE to elect political candidates who will at least pass laws making it possible for you to organize and become part of a Union that can help you negotiate a fair deal.
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are in Portland this weekend. Hillary claims to represent the best interests of specifically hard working, middle class, non-college-degreed, white workers (she specified the race). Personally, I want a candidate that represents the interest of ALL workers, even if they are sky-blue-pink. And the best way to do that is to support workers' rights to organize. PERIOD.
Another question I have is, could it be that in her desperation Hillary's campaign, or perhaps McCain's campaign, or who knows, maybe Karl Rove, or the Swift-Boaters paid DICK Berman's WASHINGTON, D.C. based Company for the timing of these Ads, hmmm?
And still another question: Do Oregonian's want some "Star Rainmaker" in WASHINGTON, D.C. telling us more of the same old, same old? I don't. Oh sure, the Unions all have offices in D.C. too, but they also have offices right here in Portland, and they employ Oregonians who become feet-on-the-street and live voices on the phone, not robots ... the message is OPEN and receptive to your feedback. You won't be limited to yelling at the TV screen!
When you see one of those Ads from DICK & their dark-side, there isn't much you can do to respond directly, beyond yelling at the boob-tube.
But, when someone has the 'nads to walk right up to your front door and look you in the eye, and ask for your support, the way the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO, "Working America" has been doing, or when one of their phone-bank callers rings your phone and identifies themselves for the same purpose, or perhaps a volunteer from SEIU does, those are LOCAL people from your very own community. They are not some rich executive/lawyer hiding 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. behind the skirt of his layers of executive secretaries! No. those are real folks outside in the rain or shine! So who ya gonna trust, local, regular folks, willing to contact you one-on-one, and accept your responses eye-to-eye or some rich girlie-men hiding in D.C. and sending their message by proxy (TV Ad) instead? Doesn't that say something to you about the honesty of either's message? It does to me.
The lawn sign is in the front yard. But, I dunno if I can afford the gas to fire-up the lawn mower to mow the lawn around it!
Here are some closing quotes that seem timely to me:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."--John Kenneth Galbraith
"Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote."--William E. Simon
"Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized."--Albert Einstein
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."--Plato
"Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers."--Aristotle
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."--Louis D. Brandeis
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead
All of those people, quoted above, are more intelligent deceased than DICK Berman is alive.
The "DICKS" of the world promote a philosophy of "Divide and Conquer" and Unions promote the opposite: "United We Stand". You choose.
VOTE A DEMOCRATIC TICKET!
In timing with the visit to Portland by the Presidential candidates, I wanna disclose my own vote for a presidential candidate. I'm more than half a century old, I'm white, I'm male, I'm working poor, and I'm voting for the next President of the United States:
Thanks for the research you've done to expose the backers of the disgusting site "unionfacts." I, too, saw their ad this morning and am appalled at the propaganda put out by this bunch.
Thanks again.
Posted by: E. A. DeCastro | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 05:52 AM
Amen!
Posted by: Tracy | Monday, June 09, 2008 at 11:01 AM